How To Talk To Your Parents About Saltburn

We're all about to lose our minds.

It happened. They were clicking through Amazon Prime for movies they could stream and after its prolific advertisement at the beginning of your dad’s new favorite show Reacher and your mom’s comfort watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, they said “I’ve heard of that one!”. They were drawn in by the fluorescent yellow gothic style serif.

They saw one of your tweets about it actually.

You said “Just saw Saltburn. That was kind of crazy.”

That’s what they needed after your mom had put away the leftovers of the new pasta dish she’d made from the Alison Roman cookbook that you got her for Christmas last year.

They were in the mood to watch something ‘kind of crazy’.

They watched Saltburn, probably not all of it, and now they can’t shut up about it.

You played no major role in this despite inputting their credit card information and helping them get logged in to their Amazon Prime account, then downloading streaming apps onto their Roku. When they get logged out, you still get them back in. You probably set up the Roku too. I know you regret this all now, but it’s not your fault. Honest.

Here are some talking points, and yes, there will be spoilers so read no further if you care about that sort of thing.

Establish a Timeline

I know, I get it. You don’t want to be in this situation any more than the rest of us. You really wish that instead of this, they chose Paddington 2. They would have loved that one, but since you’re here it’s important to establish where your parent’s stopped watching Saltburn. Whatever you’re going to be discussing with them is likely going to be awkward enough. You don’t want to make it worse by talking to them about the questionable consent in that scene or the drinking of the salty bathwater in that other scene if you don’t have to. First things first, ask if anyone died in the film. If they say “Someone dies?” you can skip over talking about the fact that our movie's hero (???) gets down and dirty with a fresh grave.

After all, it's not all champagne tennis and Rosamund Pike talking about how men are nice and dry.

You probably don’t want to get into everything that happens with your parents, so it will behoove you to decide what you want to cover.

He Did What?

Now that you know what they've seen—and they've seen some shit—you need to navigate the labyrinth of freaky, voyeuristic, and often horny moments that lie within Saltburn's 127 minutes.

If they made it to the bathtub scene, or the period scene, and your parent’s are communists I have prepared a joke for you. Get them talking about it, and then say “I didn’t think that’s what they meant by eating the rich.” It should go well, but if it doesn’t I am sorry. You’re the one who set up the Prime account for them.

I don’t think we should talk to them about the grave f*cking scene, to be honest. I don’t know how I’d discuss it with someone who has a Roth IRA AND a 401K. But should you attempt to, there are two ways you can go about it: acceptance or denial.

If you choose acceptance, you can let them bring it up and just say “that was crazy, right?” It should probably stop there.

If you go with denial, you can say “That’s what he was doing? I had no clue. Maybe you should get your mind outta the tub drain, Dad!”

If they got to the end of the film, then you’re going to have to figure out what to say when your sweet, early 60’s mom asks you what song was playing when Oliver was swinging his endowment about. You can just tell her it was Murder on The Dancefloor by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, give her a wink and then leave the state.

No matter what, you’re not going to be able to look them in the eye for the rest of the day and I think that’s fine.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I want to be the kind of adult child that can talk to her parents about most things, but I don’t want to talk to my parents about Saltburn if I don’t have to.

In an ideal world, my mom would watch it, perhaps even enjoy it, but we’d never talk to each other about it as long as we live.

If she did talk to me about it, I think I would survive the conversation, but I think I’d say some things that neither of us could ever come back from.

She’d never be able to look at me the same if I said how impossibly horny we (the collective internet) found Saltburn, or if I said Barry Keoghan wasn’t a freak, he was OUR freak. And yes, we universally find him attractive.

There’d be no discussion of the criticism of class, and wealth disparity. There would be no mention of how beautifully the movie is shot. We wouldn’t talk about how the house is a main character, the girl that everyone is fighting over, a romance object all her own.

I want to be happy for them, the parents who watch Saltburn, I really do. I hope they enjoyed it. I hope your dad’s a real film buff and was excited to see the new Emerald Fennell movie, because he really enjoyed Promising Young Woman. I hope your mom talks to all her friends about it at her yoga class at the YMCA.

For better or for worse, your parents are now part of a club of people who saw the movie, and whether they liked it or not they experienced a pivotal part of 2023 culture. Good for them.

But I am with you in solidarity in saying that if it's up to me, I'd really rather not talk to them about it.

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